The Latin Hymn-writers and Their Hymns

by Samuel Willoughby Duffield

Robert the Second cannot claim the Chorus novae Hierusalem. It is the production of Fulbert of Chartres (died 1029), and is included without question in every complete edition of his works.

Thus the absolute authority of Durand is much shaken. He was a lawyer in the thirteenth century, who studied at Bologna and taught at Modena; a legate of Pope Martin IV.; dean of the church at Chartres, and Bishop of Mende. The fact that he was dean of Chartres, and yet ascribes the Chorus Novae, not to Fulbert but to Hermannus, is suggestive, but not convincing.

So Durand was the first person to affix the name of Robert II. to the Veni Sancte. Trithemius comes next in order; the Abbot of Spanheim; historian and scholar; indefatigable in researches, but erratic and prejudiced; born 1462 and dying 1516. His true name is Johann von Trittenheim and we derive this, and other information about authors and their works, from his Liber de Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis—a biographical dictionary like those of Jerome, Gennadius, and Isidore, to whose works he really furnishes an Appendix. Egon (sometimes known as Ego) in his account of Reichenau’s distinguished men (De Viris illustribus Augiae divitis, quoted by Pez: Thesaurus Anecdotorum, I., 3; 68. Cf. Migne, 143) declares that Trithemius was “unjustly hostile to the monks of Reichenau” in asserting that “our Hermannus” was from St. Gall, when even Metzler conceded, on behalf of his own convent, that Hermann had changed his residence from St. Gall to Reichenau. Be this as it may, the positive statement of Trithemius, which gives the Veni Sancte to Robert II. instead of to Hermann, has been generally accepted. Cardinal Bona (1677), Louis Archon (1704-11), and others agree with him.

But there is a break in the continuity of faith. Clichtove—an authority much esteemed—expresses no opinion about the author of the Veni Sancte further than to say quisquis is fuerit—whoever he was.

Rambach, in his Anthology, comes now to the rescue. (Anthologie, I., 227.) He says it is “ganz unstreitig von Robert;” and all the German critics, with the single exception of Daniel, have followed this authority blindly. Whatever the Germans said has usually been enough for the English. Therefore the Veni Sancte is in every collection attributed, without a shadow of doubt, to Robert the King.

There should have been less positiveness about this if the accurate Daniel had been noticed more carefully. He praises the language of Clichtove, who says that the author, “whoever he was,” must have been “inwardly filled with light,” and he italicizes the quisquis is fuerit. But as Robert, with only three others, appears to have escaped the wreck of the sequences in the sixteenth century, even Daniel allows the Veni Sancte to him; and Archbishop Trench finds that “there exists no good reason why we should question” that Robert wrote it.

We may dismiss any conjectures about Innocent III. having been its author, although great efforts have been made to credit this hymn to his pen. Dom Remy Cellier and Migne seem the most strongly partisan, but their remarks and references are weak. (Scriptores Ecclesiastici, vol. xiii., p. 109, note. Also Patrologia, 141; 901.)

A sample of the general looseness of citation can be found in Kehrein (No. 125), who announces that Gerbert “holds Hermannus Contractus to be the author” of the Veni Sancte. Gerbert does nothing of the kind. He names Hermann with others. It is quite true, though, that he does not name Robert.

Setting aside Innocent III. for cause—although Brander of St. Gall, in his Index Sequentiarum, grants this to him—the authorship of the hymn rests between the king and the monk. I say “for cause,” since Innocent was at the summit of temporal power, and his position was a very tempting one to posthumous flattery. He is credited with the Ave mundi spes Mariae. He did not write the Stabat Mater, nor did he compose the Veni Sancte. Let any one examine the Ave mundi and he will renounce all hope that the man who prepared this could ever have written the others, or either of them. Besides, Wrangham is likely to be correct when he assigns this latter sequence to Adam of St. Victor. It is precisely in Adam’s style of metrical composition; it is not found before the fourteenth century, and its tone is modern. It can therefore be said that Innocent deserves no place among the Latin hymn-writers.

Now, Robert II. is much in the same condition as Innocent III. His is a shining name to which to affix popular hymns. He has been credited with the Ave maris stella—the parent of all hymns to the Virgin. The sequence Sancti Spiritus adsit is not his, on the testimony already adduced; but in the year 1110 the “ancient customs of Cluny,” collected by St. Udalric (Hermann’s ancestor) gives us this “at Pentecost” (D’Achery: Spicilegium, I., 641), with the “response,” Spiritus sanctus. This would serve to show that such praise to the Holy Spirit was usual. With the Chorus Novae we have already dealt. And the Rex omnipotens belongs to Hermann though it is ascribed to Robert—another instance of inaccuracy, which casts a ray of light upon the present problem.